Flamingo: A Free-Flow Watercolour Masterclass with Jane Davies

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome along to this intermediate water color class. Today we're going to be painting the scrumptious flamingo together. This class has it all looseness, texture, color, and that all important crisp detailing what's not to love. If you're in need of a creative boost, that's going to put a smile on your face. You're going to love this one. I'm Jane Davis. I live paint, teach, and walk my lovely spaniels in the beautiful South Downs National Park, England. Over the last 15 years, I've taught myself the free flow technique that you see today. Not having been to art school, finding my own way has been fun and sometimes daunting, but has allowed me to develop own style. This has led me to teaching others, either on a one to one basis or as part of a group in a wonderful studio in the heart of the South Downs. I also run a successful commission based business, painting pet portraits and wildlife art in my own home studio. In all my classes you will follow along in real time where I can guide you to keeping your work loose and fresh without over fussing. I have over 20 classes available in Skillshare. Now if you're just starting out, three beginner classes will guide you. Then you'll find over 20 master classes covering a wide range of beautiful subjects. In each one, I'll share the techniques that I use in my own professional work. We'll have a lot of fun together and you'll gain the understanding and confidence to incorporate everything you learn into your own work. Plus I'll share a few of my tips and tricks along the way to, as ever, I've provided you with a wonderful reference photo along with a downloadable template for out. The template gives you a stress free drawing, so you can just enjoy the painting. I'll be showing you how much water you really need to achieve that beautiful, loose textured body. All you have to do is not fiddle. I'll also be showing you how to add those subtle layers to give more depth, form, and interest. I'll be guiding you through creating that detailed bill and I. It's easier than it looks. Of course, I'll share many of my professional tips, tricks, and musings as we work our way through the class together. If you'd like to learn more about me, all my work, please pop over to my website at Jane Davis, Wardcolors.com.uk This can be found on my profile page along with links to my Instagram and Facebook pages. I'm very active on my social media pages where I love sharing my art, especially on stories with many ideas, works in progress, and tales of studio life. I really hope you will share all your paintings on the projects and resources pages, as I love seeing your masterpieces. And don't forget, I'm here to help. If you get stuck or have any questions, I want you to experience that buzz of painting in this liberating, wet, and wet loose style. Come and join me. 2. Materials: So welcome along to this fabulous Flamingo class and try saying that after a couple of drinks and not that I drink much. Okay, so I'm going to run through all the materials I'm using today and I'm going to start with my lovely collection of Daniel Smith paints. From the top I have Aquidome magenta rose madder, permanent, really lovely, fresh pink actually has a lovely color. I have graphite gray, which is just used for the beak. Acrodome, burnt orange. Really nice color and it does lots of nice marks. It's a fun color. I have cadmin yellow, deep hue. I have a hands of yellow light that's only used for the eye. The hands are yellow. Yeah, it's not huge amount. I have a little bit of white gosh, which is just used for tiny little bits of highlights. Now, I appreciate you probably haven't got all these colors. If you like the colors, it was the pink, the orange, and the yellow that gave that lovely combination. If you haven't got exactly these, have a look, see what you've got. You might find a really lovely combination that really lights you up. Don't feel too restricted. Obviously, a flamingo is pink, but it doesn't have to be pink. Yeah, find something that lights you up and makes you feel that's I want to use. They're lovely colors. They're lovely combinations. Go with those. Okay. The paper I'm using today is Bockingford. It's 140 Pound. Not all these can be found on the projects and resources pages. They're all there for you to refer back to, but yes, 140 pound knot. And it's been stretched on a perfect paper stretcher. I have a tongue tie. I've popped a little link in there for you if you're interested in looking at those boards. They are a good I've got my pot of water, I've got a little bit of salt. I have my trusty heart, and if you don't join me regularly, this is just about an inch high. It just allows me to tilt my bad at different heights. Fortunately, it was a lovely little item my husband made me, and then the puppy got hold of it. So it looks a little moth eaten now. Okay. So I've got the kitchen roll of paper towel, a pencil, and I've got four brushes Today, I have a number 16 and that was just to wet the larger areas down so you could get away without having a big brush if you haven't got one to hand. I have a number ten, which I do the majority of painting with. Got a lovely little sharp number two that's lovely for doing the detail. I have an eradicator brush that's for love for taking very sharp bits of light out. Now I have a hair dryer off camera, which is quite handy for this class because there's quite a few times we have to allow things to dry. It just speeds up the very last bit drying process. It's handy but not essential. Again, there's a lovely reference photo and a template in the projects and resources pages. And the template is lovely If you're not confident of drawing this out or him or her, there's a quite unusual shapes in there, so use the template. Don't feel it's cheating because like I always say, this is about painting. We're not doing a drawing class. So if you're not confident, use that and don't feel your cheating, I think that's it. I don't think there's anything else to tell you. So let's go and sketch him out. 3. Sketching Out: First things first, we need to sketch him out. Now, I've already sketched him out, but I'm just going to go through a few little tips I think might help you when you come to sketch yours out. Now obviously there's a template in the projects and resources pages, so if you're not confident and he has got some weird angles, if I have to be honest then don't be afraid to use that template. And I've just noticed I've missed a little bit out. He put that a little bit in there. The eye is something I found a little bit tricky. This is just personally me and there's always one little part of your painting or drawing your struggle on the eye was mine. Just make sure you take the time to get that right and there's also the eyeball and then there's the eye or get that in. That just helps when we come to paint it. The beak is quite an unusual shape. Again, just observe when you take that template away, you don't always get it spot on. So have a look at your reference photo and your eyes back and forth to look at the you run reference photo. And then we back to your painting sketch and you'll see if you need anything correcting to get the legs in just very roughly just at a placement where they're going to be a little line in here. Now, this looks a little old, I'm sure you're thinking, why is that so low? And there is a reason when we come to do the body, we're going to do some lovely very loose sweeps to make that tail feather. But it's just quite nice to have the line a little low if you have it up here where the tail feathers actually stopped, there's always that temptation to go higher, then you're going to end up with a rather large plumed flamingo. It's just helpful to have that line a little bit lower. Now, the head has some lovely angles. It's not actually sweeping around it does. I found that quite fun to get in. Again, just observe. I think it would be the thing I would say don't too much detail, don't put any feather details in. That's all going to be left for the salt and the water to make up some yummy texture. Yeah, I don't think there's much else to mention about the sketching out. Once you've done that, we can do start the fun bit. 4. Body: So it's onto the fun bit. So I'm just going to get rid of the very small brushes because I don't need those two needs a little less cluttered here. I'm going to pick up my large brush and we're going to wet, let me put a very faint line somewhere about there. Don't get too worried, but we're just going to wet that first. Nice lots of water carefully around the bottom there. Make sure you stay within your lines and we're going to miss out the little bit. And the sketching out I just added, we're going to miss that little bit out. We're not going to include that part. We're going to go around, don't worry if you touch that beak. Doesn't matter because the very tip of the beak is very dark. It doesn't matter once you've got it lovely and wet, and again, you can dip your head up and down, you'll see if you've left any dry patches and you ideally don't want any. I'm going to pick up the magenta, the madder, rose madder, and the burnt orange. To start with three tubes. Deep breath. Now, all we're going to do, she says we're just going to load the paint up right at the very bottom. If you find your paint isn't moving, make sure your brush is wet enough because sometimes you brush is just a little bit dry so that can add and see how that starts moving things around. Let's have a bit of orange up here, mix them. You can put them on top of one another. Lovely and strong. Now, this paint here has to work its way all the way up top there. Be quite bold. Don't be too timid. Let's, let's have the cabin as well. Let's pop a little bit of cabin down there on top of there. Let's have the madder there. See how that's moving beautifully. A little bit more orange down here. It really doesn't matter where you put these colors, honestly it doesn't. Don't worry too much. Clean your brush. And we're going to touch that wet edge and we're going to draw it out. Look at all that. Moving isn't that wonderful. Alright, tuck. Keep it all your brush nice and loose. And we're going to come round round here. Just miss out. The is the only thing you ideally don't, you don't want to go into that, what's going to be that yellow little rim, But don't be too worried on the top of the head. Now, you can put a little tilt. You're finding it's not moving very much. You can tilt your ball just a little bit. Mine's doing a Kate. I'm not going to at the moment, I'm just going to leave it there and we're going to do those little flicks in a minute. But by drawing it up, there's always a risk this starts to drive it quicker. So we're just going to add a bit more paint here and a bit more water. If you're worrying about water marks and odd sort of patterns, that's exactly what we want, so don't worry. Add a little bit there. If you're sitting, just try to sit up. Sit up. You could try sitting up. Just stay standing just for a minute. If you can just get a little bit of perspective over the top of it and see where you're going with it. Now, if you have tilted your ball, just be mindful that you're going to end up a few bottles of water. So just be careful this isn't puddling too much and runs off the board. Now, at this stage, I think I'm ready just to do those lovely flicks. Again, my brush is lovely loose and we're just going to flick up, keep eye that reference photo, you can see how far those feathers go up. That's if you'll find your paint is actually running too much up to the board. You again, I might do that. I might actually tilt it the other way for a minute. I don't want a lot of color here. I just want it to be really love and washed out. So it just once it dries, it just visible hold onto my bigger brush. Now it's a little bit of a weighting game because what we're going to do is add some water droplets and we're also going to put some salt in, but this is really wet and puddly. This is beginning to dry a little bit. It's going to be a bit of a case of hanging on and looking at your own piece and judging when you think that salt needs to go on the water droplets, you just want it to be just going off so you can almost see the tops of your rough paper beginning to dry. You definitely don't want to sitting in any puddles. I'm just going to I'm aware that you can see that's starting to run down. So I'm going to take my rubber. I don't even need my heart today, I don't think. I think that's just a little bit too tall. So I'm going to put that back down, make sure I've got this straight. Okay. I'm actually going to put just a couple of water droplets in here 'cause that's really starting to dry in that little patch but other parts are quite wet. Need that up a little bit round there. Really want these dry patches as me telling you to keep it lovely and wet all through but in it doesn't really matter, all parts of the texture. Neat that up. And it's a bit of a waiting game. Rely, as I say, it's judging your own piece. You can put extra color in. If you want to put a little bit of extra color, again, that will add some sort of interest. I want to put some strength around the neck here At the moment, it's just a bit too wet. So again, I'm having to hold on. But if you're finding that your area here is sort of drying but it's not puddling like mine, you let me do it forget. You want to just add a little bit of strength, doesn't mess, it runs into the neck at all. Just if you look at the reference photo, you see there's a bit of strength there. Again, it doesn't matter what color you use, just I've just popped on the acodome orange. And I've used a bit of the code little bit here. And it's actually quite nice. I've done quite a few practice pieces there normally too. And they all turn out differently, but I quite like a little bit of color across here. It just sort of broke up as long as it's wheezing up. And it's just a nice sort of horizontal to break up. Some of that will flow just for the eye more than anything. Now you can see why I put some water droplets there that I like how that's happening. What's happening here? That's really lovely and that's what I want. Don't want to fiddle. It's really hard because you're standing here watching and waiting. And it's so easy to fiddle around and do extra bits. But be patient and yes, try not to try not to fiddle, because by muddling it, you'll just make it muddy. If you can imagine your water by the end a painting session, how muddy that is, that's exactly what you'll do if you keep fiddling. What you really want to do is just allow that to kind of work its magic really. And its, it's quite puddly mind. So I'm just going to stand here and wait for it to dry. I might put it, let me put a bit of salt there so I don't know if I'm doing it a little bit quick but just so you can see it is actually starting to dry. Call be about ready for the salt here, pot of salt. I'm just sprinkling thing technical. Just sprinkling now. I'm really going to have to wait for this area. So Yeah, if yours is say, be a judge of your own piece on this. We're all going to be at different stages, I think at different times, be brave and trust in your abilities to judge that wetness. So I'm going to have to hang on because it really won't work on this because it's really very wet. All right? Just I'm standing here still waiting. This is still quite wet. But I do want to because this is starting to dry down here a little bit, so I just want to break it up. I just want a bit of fun, really. I just pop a little bit of yellow there. And I did also same sort of thing. I put a little bit of the pink matter just in that corner there, I'll say. Don't ask me why particularly. I just fancied it. I felt that was going to be, again, gave me another little bit of extra color, just a bit more interest. Again, I might the orange, orange put a tiny little bit of, maybe not that much, just out a tiny bit of orange up there. It's probably a case for me standing here watching it and over thinking. But let's give that a go a little bit of pink on top sometimes. Sometimes you have to just trust your instinct. If you think you want a bit of color somewhere, go for it. Just just pop it down. Okay? All right. Again, I say I haven't put any more salt down. It's still too wet, so I'm still hanging on now as this is just about the right time. I just want to put a few, I mean, a few little tiny flicks because they aren't on that bird, but I think it just breaks up some of that line. So I'm just going to just a tiny few flicks, just a few down here, just because that paint is still wet. Just breaking up that line a little bit. There really is only a tiny amount. I'm not going to go around there. It's just a tiny little bit of on the body. All right. I'm just going to put again, this is just dried at the right time of the head, this is still too wet. I'm going to find a few smaller pieces in here. The smaller the grains are smaller, the texture will look the bigger the grains, obviously the bigger markings. I'm just going to put a bit of finer bits of salt there. I've just crushed that up. It's just table salt crushed. I see salt lovely. I'm actually going to put a water droplet. So that's just loading my brush up. I'm not going to put too much because it's really wet then. Want, don't want to flood it too much but there's a couple of water droplets there and that will make some nice marks. Again, I can see this is beginning to dry really beautifully. It's going to give me some real lovely interest, but I'm having to be patient. I will put salt all around here, various little patches. I won't evenly spread it up a couple up there and probably a couple a little patch here, but as I say, that's too wet. But once you put your salt down and you're happy you just want to leave it to dry, I would recommend leaving at least a couple of hours. It takes quite a long time salt to fully exorb all that water and to leave you some lovely patterning. If you try and hurry the process along with hair dryers, which I have, it never works as well. So this is a lovely sort of class you could almost get on with and leave it. If I'm honest, I will probably film the rest of this tomorrow. So I will leave this overnight to dry and hopefully it will leave me some really interesting patterns. So yes, I'm afraid you have to be patient on this little part of the flamingo. But once once that's dried, we can whiz on and we can get on and finish it fairly quickly. 5. Neck and Head: Well, how does your Famingo look? Are you pleased? I'm really pleased with mine. I can't say the salt hasn't worked on this one. I might have even been a bit over zealous with it, but I'm going to just get rid of the salt because this has been sat overnight, so I'm pretty confident that's nice and dry. But if you haven't left it as long, just be careful. Salt takes quite a long time to dry on these, I'm just going to so that Onto the floor. Yeah. Now I get a better idea of it as well. Yeah. I'm pleased we're going to be doing the neck and just giving a little bit more form and making that stand out a little bit more. Pick up your larger brush and we're just going to wet down. And we're only going to go as far as hard to see where my line is, but this is the neck line going down here. We're just a little bit below the beak. And hopefully you can see where your neck is in disappeared a little bit. A little hard to see. Easier up here, wetting it all down. Following really the bit we've already got some color on. Go carefully around that eye because you don't want to add because there's that lovely lid there which is going to be yellow. And we don't really want to start getting paint in that area, so be careful around there. Work your way around again. Just as always, just duck your head up and down. Bobble your head up and down, you'll see if you need any more water because again, you want it nice and wet. Not puddling, but almost as close to. And no dry patches. Again, if you go over the beak, it really doesn't matter. As I say, the tip is black, so it doesn't matter, very dark. Okay, Once that's nice and wet, I'm going to pick up the same colors that are used on the body. I can get all four of those in my hand. I put my bigger brush down. I'm going to go to my number ten. Okay. Now I'm just squinting at my reference photo and I'm looking for the darker areas. It's obviously a very obvious dark part there. I'm going to use the orange and the magenta doesn't really matter what you use. Just something that's nice and dark. A little bit more magenta, I think. I don't want this to be too orange. I don't think the neck, so I'm going to probably go heavier on the pinks. But who knows? As I work a way along, a little bit of yellow in there, I'm going to sort of work my round round the head. And you can see there's a really lovely dark area here. I'm going to get that in again. It's more dibbling. Try not to sort of move your brush around, you're just placing. And even if it's just a little bit of a little bit of a rustle, give you finding it spots a little bit. I had a lovely one to one. Hello, Victoria, if you're watching is she was getting a little dotty. And I think we realized he was just putting the paint brush down. When I was saying rightly just dibble, I think I probably dibble and then move it a little bit just so that gets away from the little dot of paint. If you find your painting gets a little dot times, sometimes it's the paint if you're using Ozzie Red Gold, that does like to do a quite a lot. And also the flip side of that, try not to do too much rustling because you'll be mixing those paints up too much. Okay. We work away around here. See, I've told you I'm going to start using orange again. It's just keeping it nice and dark. If you squint your eyes, you can see there's a nice line that starts to work its way up. Just going to pop that in. I love these peachy colors. That's yellows and sort of pinks are really nice colors on there. I like that just a little bit, obviously, because we've already done one layer. It depends how. Some of your colors, how strong you made the head. Yeah. Be a guide if you feel some of the areas are strong enough. Don't put too much paint down. Don't follow me exactly. I know it's tricky because Ole I can't see everybody's work. So I have to go with my piece and how my piece is looking. Say if you feel yours is very strongly colored already, just be mindful. Just put a little bit down. You don't need a lot then. Okay, we're way around here. Again, that's a nice, I'm going to use those, the magenta and Madjlitle around here just so we can get a bit of definition as well. So we can see where the neck is. A difference between the body and the neck. It pings a little bit more. I'm losing my nice straight edges here if I'm not careful. There's a nice lump of light at the top, so I want to try and keep that there. We work our way down a little bit of orange. Actually here, it almost depends on what colors you've got lining up beside it. If you've obviously got a big lump of orange, are, don't put too much orange and vice versa. Pinky like I'm doing, put a little bit of orange just so it stands out. Now I quite like some, some my practice pieces. Let's, let me finish this a little bit here. So as you can see, there's little dark patches here as well and we will do a few flicks. While this is nice and wet, actually you can see there's an obvious shadow. I'm not going to put that shadow in, I'm just going to ignore it. Put a little bit of strength in there because it really is quite dark there and it's nice to get that strength in just under that curve of that nick. Okay, I was going to say it's quite nice to get a little bit of color. Beak, obviously there is a shadow. I say I'm not putting the shadow in, but it was quite nice to get the shadow beside the beak. I just gave it a little bit of definition, I think. Okay, have a look. Step away. See what you think. You think. You've got enough. Then stop. Don't do too much. But what we're going to do now, similar to what we did on the body, we're going to join this wet up and we're going to whiz. Be mindful of, I can't see mine very well. But there's a little gap, isn't there? Go around that. So you want to keep that gap clear and we're going to pull it down. This is where it gets a little tricky because we want to come up here, but we don't want to touch the neck. We might have to leave a little, tiny, little dry line between the neck and the body. We're just coming round here, I'm careful. I'm going to lose my little gap somewhere in there. Isn't it feel way we've just gone over it. I can always take the color out if you've done similar to me. Don't panic because once it's dry, just take that little area out. Again, if you can reserve it, it's better. Okay. Now, again, just look, see what you think. I quite like a little bit more strength down here. Again, I'm just going to tap a bit more color in here. Again, there's a lovely, we've already put a quite a little bit of color in here when we did that first layer, but we can always add a little bit more. So be careful not to touch that nick color because you don't really want the nick color running into the body at this stage. Okay, keep squinting your eyes, Keep looking for the darker area, the darks, the light will take care of itself pretty much. Now, as I've pulled that color down, I've lost that little bit of strength around the beak. And I also need to be conscious to do some of those flicks actually while that's still wet but it's a little bit too wet flick when the paints very wet quite to get quite thick. Flick, try saying that quickly flicks, I amuse myself. Okay, I'm pretty pleased with that. I think that's coming on really. I want to make sure this edge stays nice and soft. I'm just going to squeeze it with my finger a little bit. You can use a little bit of kitchen roll if you want. Just be mindful, what we don't want is a strong water mark really there. We don't want to see that edge of that water. But while I'm leaving that to dry a little bit for those flicks, we're going to put some, I can put some of these down. Thinks, get rid of that one. Get rid of that quite in the same order, but I guess it doesn't matter. Okay. We're going to do some very simple and very simple feather marks. So I'm going to pick up my slightly larger brush and I'm just going to put up a little bit of paint on the bush. We're right along the edges. We're simply going to Follow that. You can see where the feather marks are going, so make sure you get that in the right direction. So it's just a fest. Popping it down. Nice tip, that's not working overly well. A bit more paint on my brush. I know that's working too well. That's better. They're just very faint. You don't want to exact. Just again, just another little bit of interest. Tap a little bit more on there to us up there just to follow that line of the feathers again. On a bit like the flicks, it can be easily overdone. I think I'm going to leave that. I can always add more because it's not reliant on going into wet paper or anything. If I feel there's not enough there. Once that's dried, I can always add more, but they're not so easy to take out. Go sparingly on them. Soften that edge down a little bit strong there. One, do that on my finger. Okay, let's do these flicks down the neck. Before I forget about that, it's going to tidy up. I've got a little in around here. Okay. So the flick, smaller brush work right on the edge. Come a little way in, just very gently. Want a few because there aren't, there aren't really very many there, are they? But I just like them. Okay. I just want to put tiny little bit more strength, right, That's so strong. So dark in this corner here, going to add a little bit more. Got the burnt orange. I might use them with Gener again, quite dark actually there going around the eye again. As long as you, depending on where you are in the world and how warm it is. Mine still nice. I can see that it's really nice stage. You'll get to a nice, what I call nice workable stage, where it's a perfect time to put your paint down. This is just at it. I can still carry on tinkering. Now if it does begin to dry and you still want to play and it's all wet steel, you can drop. I don't want to do it with this because it's just about a nice stage. But you can just drop a little bit more paint water from your brush and wet that down again. Okay. I just so I'm just going round that eye because when I squint, I can see chin to again. I can see a really nice dark area. I can get that in. As it begins to dry, you'll find your paint won't move quite so quickly either. As I say, it's a nice working stage. Lovely. I think we're about there. Actually think there's anything else that can be done at this stage. Again, it just needs to dry. And ideally, it needs to dry naturally. If you, if you push for time, just allow it to dry a little bit more. I don't know if you can see the gauge of that. I don't know if wig on my board. Can you get a better idea how wet that is? That needs to dry a little bit more. Just as it goes off is when a head dry is ideal. Now I can put a little bit more salt down if you want to. If your salt didn't work as well as you'd hope you can put a little bit more salt down. I don't think I am on this piece because I was quite generous with that salt. I think it was quite a lot of markings on there, so I'm not going to, but you can obviously can if you feel you want to again, say let that dry and then we can move on. 6. Beak: Okay, once your next nice and dry, we can start to add some color to this beak. I love that peachy color. I'm going to pick up the cadmium yellow and the madder. We're going to do all the colored bit. Start where you can see the peachy color all the way down again, stay carefully within your lines. And don't forget, we're going to put that beak a little bit into the body. Doesn't matter at this stage really, because we're not going to put the dark down until the next layer get that nice and wet. Then we're just going to almost going to do a bit of mixing here. If you like mixing, then you can mix before you put your color down. But I'm going to just add it straight on. Again, just keeping your eye open as it were for the lighter areas and the darker areas, I'm going to keep it quite pale at the front. And I'm going to add a little bit more strength. You can go down into the, what will be the dark area, but we're not really concentrating on that. We're concentrating on getting that peachy color down. That's what we're after. Put a little pink down there, we might give it a little bit more depth. Pick up the orange. Okay, Say keep squinting your eyes. Keep adding the color where you can see where it's heavier and darker, and leaving the light area a bit pinky. Okay. Don't really need nothing terribly complicated about this. Ready? It's easy to keep didbbling and not getting ourselves anywhere. Color that I think that is about right now is ever painting a little bit. We've got to dry it. Got to leave it to dry. We need to let that dry for a minute. Then we can add the dark. You could add the dark at this stage if you're feeling brave. But it's better to let it dry completely. I'll tell you why. If you start adding the dark, it's more likely to push up with more light that will mix with the colors we've already got down there. It's better to let it dry, then we're wet it all down. Just add the dark that it's going over the top of the nice layer we've already put down. So it's just a better way to do it if I'm honest. All right, once that's lovely and dry and if you wise the hair dry over it, that's fine. And just be mindful, it's probably quite warm, so your paint now is going to dry a bit quicker and any area you wet down I'm just picking up my number ten and we're going to re wet a whole lot. Again, exactly as we did earlier going into that body. Just attach. Don't want it too wet at this layer because we don't really want that gray moving around too quickly. Although it's not a paint that does move a lot, You may not be using the graphite gray. It doesn't have to be soaking wet. I'm picking up the graphite gray. I'm going to start right at the very bottom, so I know I've got that beat going in a little bit. We're just going to tap our way up. Really lots of nice paint on your brush to make sure you get that lovely shape right. So take your time to get that nice and sculpted, where you can just see the line starting to appear. Just stop and it should just creep over the line and give us a nice, you can see the rough edges that work. Going to swap. Little tiny brush a little more control and just make sure you get those edges really lovely and neat and crisp. The looser some parts are obviously the body is very loose, the crisper you need other parts. Make sure you take your time to make sure those edges are lovely, and crisp, and tight. And then stop before you over fiddle that's looking really lovely. I will just watch it as it begins to dry and make sure it doesn't creep up too far. Obviously it does With a brush, I can very gently push it down. Or you can also give you ball, just a tiny tilts. It would only need a little tilt that will encourage it to run back down, Not carry on creeping up again. Let that dry. You can whiz a hair driver over it to speed up the process, but just make sure it's not too wet because you'll find it's shooting up the beak. Okay. Now again, once that little proportion is dry, we can pick up, get the gray off that. My number ten brush we're just this half you obviously see the bill joined comes in. So we're going to be say we're going to that we're just going to strengthen if needed. Again, if you've put enough strength down here when you did the peachy bit, then you don't need to add too much. It's just getting a nice divide. Be mindful of that shape. Make sure you stay within that dark line. I'm sure there's a very posh word for it and I don't know it. Okay. You can strengthen some of the dark if you felt you needed it. I probably don't. I shall pop a little bit down there so you can see what I mean. Make sure your brush is nice and clean and then we can add a bit more strength this side as well if you felt you needed it. It's just giving us a, giving us a chance to strengthen things up another layer just to give it a little bit more punch. I think what I will do in the finishing off bits is just to soften this, but don't worry if yours is looking a little bit hard edged. Don't worry. We'll sort all that out in the last bits. Okay, I'm liking how that's looking down. Just make sure that orange doesn't creep into the black. I'm adding a little bit more gray. Say not black, just popping a little bit more down it, at making a little dam. In some ways you're making sure that gray is pushing up into the orange and not allowing that orange to push down. A little bit of a push and pull, a little bit of tinker need to be lovely. Okay, now what we can do now, pick up the graphic graphic graphite gray and I'm going to put that lovely strong line in it comes out here. It's quite deep here, isn't it? As it does a bend, it's quite deep. Make sure you got a nice thick amount of paint on your brush and this isn't too wet. Sorry, I should have said that shouldn't move too much. You've got two layers now that this gray is going on top of it. Shouldn't move too much. I've got a very unfortunate double of water there. Let me just get rid of that. It leaks out. It's gone again. Just make sure you get the shape. Really loving Chris. Work on the outside. One. Allow that, just that one to soften also. I don't want, this is quite a strong but there's a see where I'm getting my dripples. It's running along the brush. Okay. We don't want this as thick or as prominent, but there's the nostril line here. There's also a very fine, again, make sure this is very fine, very soft. There's a little line that runs there, isn't there, out there? It's almost like sculpting. You can take little bits out, just very gently, very quietly, Very mindfully that bit of a corny word, but you, it's relevant. Okay. Make sure that edge is nice and neat, and crisp. Make sure none of that's moving too much. It should be just a little bit soft just to stop all those very hard edges. But I have a thing about very hard edges I think. Okay. Again, I'm going to allow that to dry on its own. I'm not going to put a hair driver it too soon again that it will just blow things around. So yeah, once it's beginning to go off, you can, but I think that's it for the as you can see some little white lines running down there and we can take little bits of color out. But that's all it's going to be, a few little bits to do on the finishing off ages. But this is as far as you can get really with the beak. See, hopefully these little things are helpful. Just see, I'm just watching it as I'm talking and just making sure that doesn't creep. It's just beginning to creep a little bit. I could just raise my board up a tiny bit, just a diddle bit, just to make sure that black doesn't keep running in, just as it dries. I'll just watch it for a little minute before while it gets to the stage where I can put a hair dire over it. 7. Eye: Right. We're going to start with the ice and make sure your beak is nice and dry because you don't want to be doing that and smudging things around. Maybe that's just the sort of thing I do. Okay, so we're going to pick up, I'm going to got my hands a yellow and really simple. We're just going to paint the eye that lovely yellow. Now it is a simple that as ever, we're going to have to dry that. So that can be done almost straight away with a hair dryer. And then we can put that room round. So once it's dry, pick up your little brush and I'm going to have the orange and the graphite, graphite gray. Now, if you're standing, this is a nice time to sit and get larvalying close to it and take your time. There's no great hurry. Just take your time because it's a little bit delicate. You want your lovely small brush? And we're going to go round and can do the inside. Hopefully you can see this. I'm going inside the eye, not on the outside, because if you go outside, you'll be going into the yellow rim. This little part here. This is quite thick at the moment. It will probably be closed down at some point. But it's always better to have it larger. Any light area like this, you can close in then the other way around. Because it's so hard to get light area, get dark out of light areas. This bets made it muddy, messy. Say just take the time, Go around it again, I'm working a little way away, so I'm a little bit stabbing at where I'm going. I'm sure you can sit down and get nice and close to it. It's quite thick. I haven't got a lot of water on my bush either. You don't want adding lots of water. Once you're going all the way around, make sure that shapes nice and you're pleased with it. We are going to, you brush, going to pop those down for sick. We're going to wet half the eye. You can see if you squint your eyes or look at that reference pote, you're really love and close, you can see there's a darker area over the top. Just encourage that little line at the top. Just give it a bit of a wiggle. If it's not giving you enough color or enough shadow, you can just add a tiny little bit graphite gray or your darker color very gently. Start off small, just keep dribbling it again a little bit. In this corner, isn't it? Say, just keep your eye on that reference photo and follow the reference photo. Once you've got something you're happy with, leave it, because eyes are very easy to over fiddle, Okay? And you know what's going to happen to happen now. We're going to have to allow it to dry again. You can pop or hair dry over pretty quickly. Just while I'm allowing that to dry, I'll get a little bit closer different. It's only I've been able to get a little and tinker. I won't do anything that I haven't told you about. Okay. Once that's dry, pick up your little brush. I've had a tiny little tinker. I think I did quite well from a distance. I just made that tiny little bit wider there. But it was only a fact. As I say, I couldn't get that close to it. Okay. A little bit of graphite gray. And we're going to do the pupil now. Go small to start with. And you can obviously make it bigger. Do a tiny little dot, see how it looks. And then go outward from there. And keep taking your brush away, seeing how it looks. Look at that reference photo. Keep referring back to it. Always easy to make it small and go larger than it is to go large and then try to take it out. I think that will do me actually, that's probably enough. Almost a little bit too large. That's pretty much it with the eye, We obviously need to sort this little out. But it's more of the little bits we can do in the finishing off stages. So I'm not going to put in that colored lead at the moment. That's the eye done. We will probably put a little catch light in and have a little tinker. But that all needs to be done in conjunction with other bits. That's your eye. 8. Finishing Off: Okay, it's onto the finishing off bits. There's a few little elements we're going to do for the finishing off bits. Probably a little bit normally, but I think we should do this face make that there are certain parts of the painting that will give you a little bit of a lift, a little bit of joy. And I think finishing that off will help us see the overall picture I'm going to do, I'm going to use my number ten and we're going to do, now be really careful again, this is a good sitting down job. So we're going to wet down the face. Come right up against the beak, touch bits of face, watching that gray gently blend. But you might find exactly as this is doing, just the bleeding will give you enough color. We don't need to add any more. It depends going to be a case to have a look at your own piece. What we're going to do is very carefully come up into, into the head. We're going to try to reserve the yellow rim now like mine, it's a bit big at the moment. So I can close that down. Go back to my little tiny bush and say, I am squinting from a bit of distance, but let's try and close that in. We're just going to put a little bit more strength if needed. Just take time en keep working, man. Keep closing that down so you're left with a thin, white line around the eye. And we're just color that in once it's dry really carefully. Take your time to say it's if you make it too small, it's very hard to get out again to take your time. Okay. I think I've got enough color on there that's done the job for me just by wetting that down. Allowing that little mouthpiece to gently blend and the color from the head, that's enough. But what we can do just around the outside here, adding too much water, pick up these two colors. I've got the madder and the orange. I'm just going to G. And very carefully tap round just to give a little bit more strength around the eye. If you squint your eye to that reference photo, you can see what I mean, it's quite where that yellow rim meets the head. It's quite dark. We'll gently blend this out in a minute just to stop any water marks. Okay, put those two colors down. Pick up my number ten. I'm just going to gently wet those edges. I use my finger make a little squech. You can always come out a little bit. Lovely line still is there, so you can draw that out a little bit. A little bit of a squich. Don't want to lose this light here, so be careful. You don't allow the painter to take away your light. If this wasn't dark enough, you could carry on wetting this a little bit further down, add a bit more color or take it out. I'm going to take a bit out. There's a lovely sense of light here, so I'm going to actually take a bit out. If you haven't put enough strength in there, you can add a little bit more strength. And then with your brush, let me show you, add that in, It's really lovely and strong. You brush, take the excess moisture off. What you don't want to do is clean your brush and then go straight in again, because you're going to have loaded your brush up too much with too much water. Then you take the light sculpting. You can just gently suck up some of the colors. You're taking out the number two layer I suppose, and leaving the first layer. Just checking, I haven't lost some of that nice color there. As I've poured, as I've wet further out, it's obviously allowed the color to the run a little bit. All right. Let's take my brush away. See what I think? I think that's looking all right. It's a little stark at the moment because it's obviously the yellow needs to go in. Shut that down a little bit more. Playing a risky game here, you would be too far away. All right, leave that for me. If you ever have anything like that, it gets a bit mucky, just leave it to dry and we'll. I would try and take that out, but that was me being overconfident there. Okay, We can just go back into the face, at my tiny brush down, pick up my ten. This is colored really well if you haven't. And some of my practice pieces, I had to add a little bit of color in. But it's the minutest amounts. Just to give you a little bit of shadow, a little bit of depth of form, we'll put a little bit there because you can see there's a darker area just there. Just tapping in very gently. Again, everything's very loose actually will put a little bit of color. A little bit of the gray underneath that where the head met. You can see that gives you a little bit more strength. We'll put some of those very fine lines in, but that needs to dry. First, clean your brush first, Jane, Again, you can take any light out. Squint, It's quite a nice bit of light here. And we need to actually to soften this, don't we? Again, we can go into the peachy part of the beak, give a bit of a rustle. You can soften that line down a bit. It with your finger. A little bit of paper towel, kitchen roll. Just kind of want to get rid of that very sort of hard line I had there. So that's softened it. Lovely, right? I'm going to allow that to dry. And I'm just going to do this a little bit here because of a funny little part that's easy to forget. That's a little part underneath the beak, just the back of the body really. So we're going to wet it down. Touch right up against the neck. All we're going to do, let's use again. Doesn't really matter what color. Obviously this is very pink. Might use the burnt orange. And take my advice, this is very use orange vice versa. Just tap it in a long right underneath the beacon, right against the neck. And it should just gently blend out. If it doesn't, just give it a little little tease out. Yeah, that's enough. We don't want to do too much more now. We need to do the legs. I've got a spare bit of card here, I can show you how I do those. Let's move out of the way for a minute. A little bit of spare paper now there she says they're fairly simple. You just a quick action now. Get your bigger brush, clean it off, make sure it's nice and dry. Take the excess moisture off. You don't want it too wet. Nice amount of paint when your brush and it's just a sweep. A bit dry. Too dry. So it's too wet, almost perfect, Isn't it? Just a quick sweep. Some will work better than others. Just put a little bit of gray on there as well, so sometimes you just got the right amount. It's best to quickly transfer. That's quite nice. That's quite nice. Let's transfer that. Let's pick up my painting again. Let's bring that back. Okay. Deep breath and we're going to again, say top on the top. And a quick action down. Same again. Sometimes your brush is just about right. It's a tiny bit of pink, I just can't help myself. And again, start the top. A little bit of a wiggle, come down that's gone a little far but don't worry. I'm thinking if it's something like that, I can take that back out again. But what I really love is those little bits of light that's been left in there. Now, with your smaller brush, you can just give a little bit of tinker. Just just to give it a little bit of shape here. And again, took squiginto the body so they don't look like it's too stuck. That folks is really your legs. And once it's dry, I will just take with Vadicated Bush. I'll probably just take a little bit out because that's gone. A little bit of array. Okay, now that should be dry enough. But what I'm going to do is just wheeze a hair dryer, make sure it is dry, and then we can put that yellow rim round. Okay. So we'll be a small brush first. I need to get rid of that. Rid of color. Okay. Would you be yellow? I'm just going to paint it in. I think nothing fancy all makes sense, doesn't it? I think that's worked pretty well when I go off camera. I'll probably just close that down a little bit, but I can't get that close to it. And I will probably just spend a little time looking at the reference photo and just making any adjustments I feel unnecessary. I think there's a tiny little bit of dark here that needs to go in as well. I'm working a little way away. Just have a look at your own piece. I don't know quite what needs to be done but say take a good look at the reference photo and just teressary, So we've done this little bit down here, so just be mindful if that's a little bit wet. I'm just going to take this out to see if I can do that. Grab myself a clean pitch of kitchen roll. I'm just going to see if I can. A synthetic brush is usually better for doing this. A not da let me get that stuff from that down. It was troubling me. I'm not sure if I could have carried on seen my rather weird leg. Lovely. Okay. So what we're going to do is just go round and take any light we feel necessary to take out. Let me methodical this, I really like, I don't really want to take any out, but you could soften the little areas down if you feel that got a little bit heavy, if you felt too much paint ran up to the top there. When you did that very first layer, you can say very gently, take some color out just such as the head's got a nice lump of color on Again, we can just very gently with a nice soft brush. I have got my little eradicated brush, but it's a little harsh. I don't want to take, it does lines very well, but not large areas, so that's nice, just squinting. My eyes have many looks. I come down these beautiful here, all that salt marks and water marks, and you don't really want to be messing with that too much. I'm quite happy with the feather marks. If you felt you needed a few more again, you can add a couple more if yours weren't bold enough. But I like that my neck, I think got a little fat if I'm honest. I think I lost my pencil marks, so I'm just going to see if I can re find that lighter area. Yeah, that's probably just I think it's a little thick, but I'm not sure if I make that gone a little thick. That's fine. Now, there is a nice lump of light here as well. But looking at my piece, I'm not sure if I want to take any color out. I like how that paint evolved and how it's left and made some nice patterns. Sometimes you have to look at your own picture and see, be a gauge, be judge of your own piece and don't be afraid if there is light there but you like your piece, you don't have to take it out if you like. What you see, there is a little bit of light here. I'm just going to very gently take a tiny bit out there. Just very gently says, some really lovely salt marks. I don't want to do too much as I come round here. We've done the head. I lost that little bit of light here and we were fiddling. Won't me, up here. So I'm just going to gently take a little bit of light out of there. Okay, I think the beak needs a little bit of attention. Bring back eradicated brush again. We're just looking for the light and little line. There's a lovely little line coming down here, co gen because colors, the colors I got lift out quite easily so you don't want to scrub too much. There's another one here we'll put the line in in a minute with a little bit of white gouache better. This is a little chunky to put that in using the brush. If you feel you want to tinker with this line a little bit more, then I'm happy with mine. But you can make your little, if you feel you need to, actually going to put such a little white line that runs A long dark edge, We can get it out a little bit here. I want to take too much of this out. So it's really cater going around your own piece because we're all going to be quite different at this stage. It's looking at your own piece and seeing if you need light out. You may not take a little bit at the front. There's something quite nice to make sure that it's nice light at the front. As we made the effort to make that bit darker. I'm just taking a bit of time to have a look and looking back at my reference, so I'm liking it. The pencil marks are all in there still. So I think what I might do before we just do that little catch light and little bits of white Gus, I might whizer hair with a driver it just to make sure all those parts are lovely and dry. And then we're going to rub those pencil marks out. Okay, let's get rid of some of these pencil marks. There's not many, but they're always nice to get rid of. So just be really mindful and make sure that it is probably dry, so you probably got that little line in there, so make sure you buff that one out head gently. Now some of you where we did the second layer and we whizzed it round and it went up against the neck. Mind isn't very obvious, I probably managed to get quite close to the neck. Got a bit. Anyway, you may have a little tiny white line down there or a little clear line. You can a very gently, a little bit of color on your brush and your little brush, just dibble it down and just squidge it with your finger. If you need it, you may not need it. What's the other thing I was thinking of? Again, the eye. It's lovely to have that little bit of light out, hopefully by halving the light like we did the eye and putting that little bit of shadowing on the top. It's left you with a nice, clear, yellow part. If not, then you can always take it out. So you can clean your little tiny brush and then just wipe the bottom away. And you should be left with something like that. If yours got a little murky and just do that, we'll wipe away quite easily. And Right. I think the last little bit is to put that little tiny line in, in the beak. Tiny catch light. It doesn't actually show a catch light, but I always like to put them in a I said, but start with, we're very carefully run a little little line down here. You don't have to go all the way along. It doesn't have to join up. You can do little patches of It's tiny, isn't it? It's Give it a little wipe if you feel it's got a little strong. Yeah, I think that's enough. That line. Yeah, I don't think that's going to show up particularly well. Okay, let's put that catch light in, right up on the eyeball water of the front. You may find you don't like it. I'm not sure whether I like it or not really. Mainly sometimes don't work when you've taken a nice chunk of light out at the bottom. Sometimes you just don't need that little white catch light. If you don't like it, let it dry and you can obviously tiny little dot of gray over back fill it. I don't think there was any other tinkering bits that I thought of that my piece doesn't obviously show but will be useful for you. I think I've covered it all. But again, take your time. Look at your own piece. I know I always say this, but just step away. Even if it's just to go and make a cup of tea and come back. I normally like to leave, especially any commission pieces overnight. And I will tinker, if necessary, the next day. But yes, I hope you enjoyed this class. I've loved doing it. It's taken a while to get together. We managed to get Covid and we one of the takes didn't take very well. Thank you for your patience. If you've been waiting for this one. If you enjoy this class, please do leave a review. If the little message pings up on skillshare giving you the option to leave a review, I always very humbled and appreciate them greatly. Please do leave if you feel you enjoyed it. Thank you. 9. Final Thoughts: I hope you enjoyed this class. Did that Flamingo pull a big smile on your face. How did the body go? Were you able to resist fiddling and allow those paints and salt to work their magic? Did you find the second layer gave you more depth? Giving your flamingo some gentle form? What about the bill and I? It's the lovely subtle layers that give you that all important detail. As I always say, it's worth stepping away and coming back and looking at your painting with a fresh pair of eyes and tweak if necessary. So we look forward to seeing you in the next class.